Read on Twitter
Congress doesn’t offer us certainty about much but if it doesn’t provide revenue support for state and local governments, it’s guaranteeing massive unemployment in a sector that represents about 13% of all jobs.
A comparison of local government job losses in the Great Recession and COVID-19 is instructive here.
Time to ask your local officials to get very specific about what services and whose jobs are on the chopping block.
More than 2/3rds of counties are already planning public service cuts.
More than 2/3rds of counties are already planning public service cuts.
If you don’t have a sense of where the cuts will come from, or how much they will mean, look around you. And look at where state and local money is spent. Ask what that would mean in a pandemic and economic crisis.
States spend largest share (43%) on public welfare (a category that includes most of Medicaid spending). Talk to someone who just lost their job and needs insurance. Then higher ed (18%). Talk to someone starting a degree program or a college instructor or staff member.
The next largest category for states is health and hospitals (this includes some Medicaid spending too). Talk to someone who works in a rural hospital.
For local governments, the largest share of spending (40%) is in elementary and secondary education. I don’t have to tell you to talk to a parent or a teacher. Then health and hospitals (10%). I could repeat myself.
The larger point is: if we describe the fiscal effects of congressional inaction in purely aggregate, quantitative terms , we miss their very real implications for daily life. Certainly for the state of the economy and unemployment. But also for direct service provision.
State and local officials also have an incentive to not be that clear about this up front, in an election year. But when Congress fails to act, it will force states and locals to inflict pain. And what is left of the legitimacy of state and local government will dissipate.
The question to every member of Congress right now should be: “Are you comfortable with guaranteeing unprecedented unemployment in the state and local sector? Have you thought about the effects on the economy and direct service provision?”
Whatever the answer is, it’s increasingly apparent that Congress is not only leveraging the crisis to “escalate plunder” as Robert Brenner has claimed. It’s acting in ways that will engineer a crisis of public authority itself. The consequences of this cannot even be tabulated.
If you want a picture of this, look to Puerto Rico, look to New York in the era of “Fear City”, look to post-Katrina New Orleans, or post-Hugo Virgin Islands.
